Britta Essing new honorary professor at the Institute of Management

"I have a mission," says the newly appointed professor. "I am concerned with adapting technology to the needs of people." The topic of usability, she says, is about designing usable, interactive tools that satisfy people. So it is important to Essing to improve the handling of IT or to make processes more effective. "However, nowadays technology not only surrounds us in the form of tools, but is becoming more and more a part of our entire living environment. Whether Metaverse or Society 5.0: Rather, we need to ensure that 'Internet of Things' contexts and future augmented/virtual worlds do justice to us as sentient and social beings and are not detrimental to our mental health, but perhaps even beneficial to it." They must therefore be not only fit for use, but fit for human beings," says the professor. That is why she would like to establish the term "humability" as a continuation of usability and as a new interdisciplinary research topic.

Essing studied psychology and computer science

Essing studied psychology and computer science at the University of Bonn, a very unusual combination in the 1990s, she says. "But I have always been interested in human-machine communication," she emphasises. She earned her doctorate at the University of Cologne with a topic on the transfer-friendly design of further occupational training. Today she heads the Human-Centered Engineering & Design unit at Fraunhofer in Sankt Augustin.

Usability has now been Essing's topic for 27 years, and she still sees a lot of potential for improvement there. In some areas, the software is as bad as it was in the 1980s, she says. That's why she says it's also very fortunate and a great opportunity for her to teach at the Institute of Management (IfM) at the H-BRS and to pass on the idea of human-centred design of technology to the managers of tomorrow in the spirit of the transfer idea.

Ihne: A great gain for us

University President Ihne is very much looking forward to working with the new honorary professor. "I am glad that we were able to bring Professor Essing to the university and that we will benefit from her excellent expertise. This is a great asset for us," he says. In addition, he adds, the cooperation with the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, here in particular the FIT, will also be strengthened. Present at the appointment were Professor Dirk Schreiber as Director at the IfM and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Professor Dirk Reith as Presidential Representative for Cooperations with Research Institutions.